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Topic: K.W. Jeters, scourge of the galaxy?

Greetings Sentients, I am new to this site, but not to fett fandom. Seems i have found many a kindred spirit here in the aply named "serious geeking" area of the site. I have read your posts and know that you take these subjects seriously, and i can appreciate that. And if you actually read this entire post i know that you are indeed both serious and one of my geek compatriots. So it is to this audience that i would like to pose the question; "should K.W. Jeters be strung from the rafters?" Now in all reality i would never suggest or condone physical violence aginst anyone, much less an author i have never met. But this man has shown no respect for those authors that went before him, or the characters that were developed. Please, let me explain... In the early part of the 1990's Bantam books came out with new star wars stories with Timothy Zahn's trilogy, much to our collective delight. Bantam went on to produce many other star wars stories, but more than this they did one very special thing. They established a special continuity. Because the artistic licence was limited (due to the fact that 'the flannelled one' was still planning on making prequels) the company payed close attention to what its authors were writing. This was evident in character continuity, time line continuity, and crossovers. For example; the company would not let an author have a cameo appearance of Solo, if Solo were written into another story (already published) in the same part of the timeline on the other side of the galaxy. If you read more than a few of the books you have seen some of the characters were created by one author, and then made appearances in other stories. I'm sure you could quote the litany of all such crossovers of your favorite characters including Mara Jade, Dengar, and Fett himself. The pinnacle example of this is shown in Tales from the empire with the short story that is in four parts by different authors. The characters remain the same and continuity is retained, but the feel of the story changes with each authors interpretation. Although i consider Daniel Moran's story to be definitive on the character statement of Fett in "Last one Standing," I also appreciate the fleshing out of the character in "A Barve Like That." The whole feel of the story is different but the author retains the sense that Fett is not some opportunistic thug, but someone who follows a code of honor. This is really what drew me towards the character of Fett. The armor was really cool, and the mystique of being a pseudo-villian, but it's the stories that really got me. And if any story did contradict this ideal, most of the people that visit this post would be so frustrated and angry that we would burst a blood vessel. Enter K.W. Jeter. Before entering our favorite galaxy he had written a book as a sequel to blade runner. The original idea was not his, he only followed someone else's ideas with his own. But as I did not read this book I cannot comment on how his writing was. So lets skip ahead.. Now I'm pretty sure that bantam books didn't go on vacation while this guy was writing. But did they even check for continuity? If you read the "tales of the bounty hunters" [TOTBH] (and I'm sure as you're reading this, that you did, probably multiple times, as i did) you know that each of the five stories (about the six characters that were on the bridge of the executor) brought something unique into the story and the larger star wars galaxy. In the very beginning of the first story we see IG-88 become sentient and absorbing incredible amounts of information. In fact the first five pages only represents five seconds since they turned him on, and everyone in the room is dead by page nine. (although this is not germain to the subject, it is a very cool story) TOTBH goes on to introduce us to Dengar a.k.a. Payback. This, in my opinion, is one of the coolest characters in the expanded universe. He teters on the edge of insanity while he demonstrates superhuman, but not inexhaustable, power. And later in "A Barve like that" they expound on this character and show that both Fett and Payback have a healthy respect for each other if not also a friendship. Jeter writes this character as someone who fears fett. This isn't likely as he has already gotten the better of fett, and has also made his peace with him. Besides that, Fett knows that Dengar would pose a serious challenge as an adversary with all of his enhanced abilities and total lack of fear. Bossk in the third story is a proud and superstious trandoshan who looks down upon humans because we eat other mammals (our own kind) while he would consider eating another reptile barbaric. Jeter has him chewing the bones of his father. Did this guy ever read a book? Bossk was a much better, and a bigger character when Kathy Tyres wrote him. Good Cathy, Bad Jeter. The next story was really a unique idea. The duo of one hunter that was pure logic, and the other pure intuition. A good story with an unexpected ending. I enjoyed how everyone from Zucuss' planet is named "gand" until they earn themselves a name. As Zucuss obviosly must have done, we must assume he has some modicum of skill in hunting and his intuitive powers. Thusly armed when facing Fett in Jeter's book, Jeter still paints Zucuss as some little punk quaking in fear at the mere sight of Fett. (like zucuss didn't see the meeting coming or didnt expect it's outcome?) Again i guess Jeter failed to read the books that came before. I would think that research into the characters you wanted to write about would be an important thing to an author. I would certainly want to know about what came before, and what the characters were really about. If i wrote a book with Han Solo as whiny as luke was through the first two movies, i think it would upset people. In my opinion Jeter's portrayal of Fett lost something. Besides the fact that he ruined some great characters by not doing research, or even caring in the slightest about the galaxy in which he was writing. His writing itself was somewhat bland and definitely not on the mark of what i respect from the character that we love and revere. All other books in the bantam universe were special because they respected the characters, story lines, and timeline of what was previously published. So what the hell happened? Did Bantam fall asleep on this one? A reduction of staff of the guy in charge of this department? No editing or stop caring? Perhaps Bantam did change their policy. I cant tell you because i refused to read anything else by this author. It is painfully obvious that TOTBH is not a book that is on Jeter's shelf. So anyone who is familiar with Jeter's follow up to blade runner will have to tell me if he even payed attention to the original book. Even as much as I love Fett, I really dont care where the rest of Jeter's stories went, because the first one was so bad. And even though the first book was bad I just kept reading hoping that he would redeem himself. Almost every other book i have lent out or given away to share these wonderful stories. Jeter's is the only one i tore in half and put to good use. Half went to level the short leg of my kitchen table, and the other half I threw on the grill and burned in effigy. This not only allowed a healthy venting of my anger, but also prevented some poor soul from the torture i inflicted upon myself. I will keep my vision of Fett that is consistent with the character explored by Moran. The Hunter of few words and an underlying code of personal conduct. While taking every advantage over his quarry and selling his services, he does so to satisfy his personal sense of justice. Fett conducts himself by his own code of honor and to this he will not capitulate. There is a special little place in hell waiting for Mr. Jeter just for writing about my favorite character without caring enough about the subject to do his research. And although I don't wish any physical harm on this gentleman, I cannot say what would happen if we met face to face. I obviously have strong feelings about the matter. While I am interested in your opinion of this, and i do invite all comments agreable or dissenting, i will not apologise for my opinion of Jeter's work.

I plead unrepentant.

Live Well~jaster

We spend nearly the whole of our lives searching for the appropriate role that will mark the end of our existence with some moment of glory, ignoring the fact that fame and reputation are but mere perfumes of virtue. They never last.

Re: K.W. Jeters, scourge of the galaxy?

Actually, it was the Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy that made me a Fett fan. After I read them I read the other book, TOTBH. I only had a handful of continuety problems. One being that in Tales from Jabba's Palace it has Boba on board Punishing One (Dengar's ship) and in BHW it has him in a cave. But he could have been moved after he was in Dengar's ship.And then the other thing is that in Bossk's story in TOTBH it goes way off track and goes off on some other weird adventure altogether where Bossk ends up dying (or was he just captured? It's been a while), whereas in BHW he's hanging around. But you could say that Bossk was able to escape from captvity and didn't die.

There's always ways around continuty errors. And besides, Jeter is no where near as bad as Barbara Hambly is. 0_0

Oh, and on a side note I read another of Jeter's books, some horror one, I forget what it's name is. It was really good, I liked it.

Reality doesn't care if you believe in it.[url]http://www.townparkradio.com[/url] - Video Game Remix Music

Re: K.W. Jeters, scourge of the galaxy?

Miba wrote:

There's always ways around continuty errors. And besides, Jeter is no where near as bad as Barbara Hambly is. 0_0

Ditto.

While I did find Boba Fett's personality to be somewhat different in Jeter's books, the only part of the story I seriously disliked was what he did with Zuckuss. He completely ignored the established character and created a whiny little coward with no apparent conection to 4-LOM.

Re: K.W. Jeters, scourge of the galaxy?

Miba wrote:

Actually, it was the Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy that made me a Fett fan. After I read them I read the other book, TOTBH. I only had a handful of continuety problems. One being that in Tales from Jabba's Palace it has Boba on board Punishing One (Dengar's ship) and in BHW it has him in a cave. But he could have been moved after he was in Dengar's ship.And then the other thing is that in Bossk's story in TOTBH it goes way off track and goes off on some other weird adventure altogether where Bossk ends up dying (or was he just captured? It's been a while), whereas in BHW he's hanging around. But you could say that Bossk was able to escape from captvity and didn't die.

There's always ways around continuty errors. And besides, Jeter is no where near as bad as Barbara Hambly is. 0_0

Oh, and on a side note I read another of Jeter's books, some horror one, I forget what it's name is. It was really good, I liked it.

I agree, The Bounty Hunter Wars really made me like Fett more than the other characters. It shows him not only as a warrior and a fighter, but how he can think through any situation and make the best of it. For example he scared Bossk off his own ship without doing amything to it, all in a matter of maybe 5 min.

Re: K.W. Jeters, scourge of the galaxy?

First let me say that I had a VERY hard time reading through the BHW. In the first or second book (I'm having a bad day, and right now I can't remember the names of 'em), Jeter had like 90 pages devoted to Kuat of Kuat!! I was internally griping that I wanted to read about Boba Fett, not Kuat and his little cat thing. If Jeter had of made the plot move a little quicker, I really would have liked it. The third one in the series did a good job of that. I don't know exactly what I'm saying here.... *sigh*

Oh, and Miba, is Barbara Hambly a SW writer? Name sounds familiar, but like I said before, I'm having a bad day.

Re: K.W. Jeters, scourge of the galaxy?

Yes, Hambly wrote Children of the Jedi and Planet of Twilight, and to me they're among the worst SW books out there. There's several parts where you have no clue what's going on. Like, at one point that I was particarliy confused at was when she had Luke on this ship, and he was being surounded by the enemy and he was thinking, "Well, only one way to deal with this, better cover my face" then suddenly without any explenation Luke's on a hill nearby and the enemy's been blown over. And there's never any explenation of what happened, I can only assume that Luke started a little wind storm. And at another part, Luke's walking down some road in some town for some reason and goes to some house for some reason, though I think we do finally find out what that's about later on, but it has no big secret to the plot to keep it hidden like that. Oh, and she ruined Daala's character.

But, yeah, I had trouble reading the BHW on my first runthough cause I was really confused by the end of book 1, but that's why I bought the second and third, to know what happens. It shouldn't be looked at as being one book, another book, and then another, but as a whole where, when combined into one huge book, they look like one solid book, not three parts. Like all 6 SW, if they were all one long continious movie, kinda-sorta.

Reality doesn't care if you believe in it.[url]http://www.townparkradio.com[/url] - Video Game Remix Music

Re: K.W. Jeters, scourge of the galaxy?

Oh, yes, I agree. Kuat of Kuat has a big role, I liked the parts with him, he seemed cool, at least from what I can remember. I last read them in 2001. Eek, that's a long time ago, I need a reread sometime.

Reality doesn't care if you believe in it.[url]http://www.townparkradio.com[/url] - Video Game Remix Music

Re: K.W. Jeters, scourge of the galaxy?

My biggest issue with the BHW: 1) Kuat, the carpet bombing, the guy on dialysis, and the bad seed sister. Talk about deus ex machina, and beating your reader with the club of 'I'm cramming this together, it fits, don't look at the man behind the curtain, nothing to see there'. Part of a good book involves suspension of disbelief, but when your premise reeks of something out of 1980's evening serial drama coincidence, it makes it hard to keep an accepting state of mind. I found the Kuat connection weak at best.2) The woman. Yes, you knew this was coming. Neela, that's her name. Again, it seemed VERY weak. Fett picks her up, all but dead in space, on a ship with a bunch of other dead guys. Then, he figures, hey, I know, I'll stick her in Jabba's palace and make her a slutty dancer and see what turns up. That's absolutely the LAMEST plot contrivence I've come across in ages (and trust me, I read category romance on a steady basis so I see some winner contrivences out there). It TOTALLY didn't make sense. I could see if someone was paying him a large sum of credits to find her past, but frankly, he's been established as a 'don't get involved' kind of guy, he had other contracts active at the time, and she didn't represent all that much in the way of a pay off. Last, he's established as having some morailty, I can't see him handing over a potential source of value to a capricious, overgrown pervert worm thinking she'll be safe as his evening entertainment. Jabba's just as likely to eat her, or feed her to his pets as look at her, so again, it doesn't wash.

Keep in mind, though, the powers that be are in charge of the big convergences, so who knows if Jeeter even came up with that, or some flunky said "Yeah, and I want this chick in it who looks like my ex-girlfriend, and we're gonna have her be a pole dancer at Jabbas and she was memory-scrubbed by space scum after her sister sold her our for two bits, yeah! And lets have the someone carpet bomb Tattooine, because that place doesn't suck nearly enough...." Really! Like anyone could tell the difference before and after carpet bombings on the desert planet? And there's poor old Jeeter going, "Hmm, appease the powers that write my check, or, stay true to a believable plot and not write this book". Something to consider.

I think what Jeeter did well was characterization. Plot, not his strong point, but the characters resonated in a way few other writers are able to reproduce. Mainly Fett and Dengar, I believe. Bossk and the others come across as the keystone cops, so I guess they get the short shrift. There are some brilliant interactions, and internalizations (especially in the sarlaac) so I let the rest slide.

Re: K.W. Jeters, scourge of the galaxy?

Like everyone else, I was upset about what happened to Zuckuss, but I must point out that it did match his character in the Shadows of the Empire comic book. So which one is correct? ( I don't know the date for Shadows). As for Boba, I didn't really notice too much of a personality difference. Yes, he talked more, but he wasn't as angsty as in Tales, so I prefer a balance of the two stories. And the great thing about BHW is that Boba was still cool, even while injured. I especially loved the part where he was fighting the ex-stormtrooper on board Slave 1, without any oxygen. (Definitely need to reread that.)

Re: K.W. Jeters, scourge of the galaxy?

Jeter, I don't think, is the big issue here. If we're taking character continuity and story continuity, there's bigger beef to be had with Lucas. All signs point to the fact that he didn't read book 1 of his own expanded universe before he created the prequels.

Re: K.W. Jeters, scourge of the galaxy?

Rayek wrote:

Jeter, I don't think, is the big issue here. If we're taking character continuity and story continuity, there's bigger beef to be had with Lucas. All signs point to the fact that he didn't read book 1 of his own expanded universe before he created the prequels.

Yep. George doesn't care squat about the EU cept for all the money it makes him. Which makes me especially worried about the TV series, when he will probably start calling the post-ROTJ literature "fan fiction" and replace it all with his own crazy garbage.

Re: K.W. Jeters, scourge of the galaxy?

Actually, there are several things GL does with EU. Like in the Mandalorian Armor it has Boba remembering and he remembers "looking into the visor of an empty helmet, once owned by an extinguished terror, and seeing his own future in it" or something like that, which is what happens in AOTC when Boba holds Jango's helmet and looks at it.

And then of course there's the EU characters that are in the movies, like Aayla and Quinlan Vos. And I heard a rumor that there's a bust of Vergere in the library in AOTC, but I've never seen it. And then that one guy in ROTS is a representative of Garm Bel Iblis. And in AOTC one of the Jedi extras looks an awful lot like Mara Jade would if she had black hair. (or at least I think that) And there's several others but I'm a bit too tired right now to think of them.

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Re: K.W. Jeters, scourge of the galaxy?

I just don't like how he keeps certain things, but f***all to everything else that doesn't fit into his definition of how it should be. Was the name Mandalorian even mentioned in any of the notes/scripts of the original trilogy?

Re: K.W. Jeters, scourge of the galaxy?

Actually, there was more to it then Fett just randomly dropping Neela off at Jabbas. He knew who she was.

I read TotBH, and I thought it was utterly ridiculous, at least in regards to IG-88 and Fett. Fett was protrayed as someone who can never be bested. Invincible. There was also no depth of character (outside of Dengar) with that book. Very little development.

Jeter was very detailed in developing his characters, as well as developing any element of the book. It showed that Fett wasnt invincible, and can in-fact be bested. I liked this aspect most of all. Also, as someone mentioned, it showed Fett as more of a thinker instead of a straight-up killer who always mystically appears in the right place at the right time.

Edit: And yes, GL does get into the EU. He had made several deicisions, and made outlines of what could and couldnt be done, for the writing of the New Jedi Order series. Also, notice Anakin's scar in RotS and Clone Wars? That was from EU.

"I am one acquainted with the night. As a phantom I see all but light."

Re: K.W. Jeters, scourge of the galaxy?

BalanceSheet wrote:

I haven't read SOE in ages, but I was wondering...is 4LOM in that book with Zuckuss?Just out of curiosity....

Both Zuckuss and 4-LOM are in the comic book, but Zuckuss is hanging out with Bossk, and 4-LOM is with a bunch of random bounty hunters (if I remember correctly). So if Shadows is older than Tales, does that mean that Zuckuss's correct personality is the stupid one? (Which would be sad). And I don't hate Tales at all; I just think Boba was a little bit too angsty. Both of them are good though.

Re: K.W. Jeters, scourge of the galaxy?

Rayek wrote:

If we're taking character continuity and story continuity, there's bigger beef to be had with Lucas. All signs point to the fact that he didn't read book 1 of his own expanded universe before he created the prequels.

i quite agree with you Rayek, but george being the creator of this wonderful world has the lattitude to change things as he sees fit, and not listen to the other authors that wrote stories between the first series and the prequels. That being said, I definitely don't agree with the changes he made (the world of concord dawn became concordawn? and the armor that fett wore he collected from the long extinct mandalores became he descended from mandalores? please correct any innacuracies) but it is his province to do so. also I thought it so much cooler that he re-invented himself as the boba fett persona. The crime he committed by killing the other journeyman protector (presumably a real scumbag by the story) was done for the same principled philosophy of justice of which fett lives by. For my money this is a much better start of this character than the clone of another (another who got himself whacked in short order I might add) And what's up with the damn clones anyway? was there some genetic abnormality in the cloning batch? when they are supposed to share dna with the greatest bounty hunter in the galaxy, and we all know that a stormtrooper can't hit the broadside of a bantha at fifty paces. But then again boba fett only connected with one out of five shots in the trilogy...

but what is important is what i complained of in my original post. Jeter and Bantam Books. I dont fault inacuracies with other star wars stories from other publishers. I'm sure every author will apply their own perspective. and im sure more than a few will screw up the timeline. George will take his creative licence, however misdirected (read as jarjar, et. al.), because it is his world. but the bantam world was something different, they had staff that would advise authors in order to keep continuity. and i have found that most of the best stories and writers came from this company's tradition, with exception of only a few stinkers. Then came Jeeters. It was a blatant disregard for the tradition of Bantam. There must have been a change in the staff, and or policy of the company. I think this was even worse than the issues of screwing up the characters. But in that respect, and for the record, Payback would never be afraid of Fett, zuckuss would intuitively see the outcome and is not a punk, and bossk would not cannibalize his own father. If you are a fan of the Bantam world and it's characters and the amount of continuity in this world, give a shout out. If you're upset with this break in continuity, then speak your mind. personally one of my favorite characters is Gilead Palleon, and at least Jeeter didn't screw that one up.